Chapter 706: Going Home
“This person is truly pitiful. I hope he can be reborn into a good family after reincarnating through the Underworld.”
An immense sorrow enveloped the three of them. After witnessing Jiang Li’s life, they felt an indescribable sense of suffocation and powerlessness.
Luo Ying sighed. “Just as eighty percent of the worlds have already been destroyed, what happened on Blue Star, what happened to that Jiang Li who shares Jiang Li’s name, are all things of the past. We are powerless to change them.”
“All we can do is record these events and report them truthfully to the Human Sovereign Hall.”
“Do we record this person’s story as well?” Luo Zhu asked.
Luo Ying shook his head. “No need. The investigation report cannot record individuals in such detail. If we did that, wouldn’t we have to write down the past of every single person?”
Every time he recorded the destruction of a world, Luo Ying would feel grateful that he had possessed a fragment of the Celestial Ascension Ladder back then, allowing him to turn back time. He was grateful he had met Mister Jiang, who could save worlds and allow his own planet to be reborn.
It was just that those as fortunate as himself were far, far too few.
“What a pity… Fellow Daoist Kongkong, please do as before. Restore the civilization this world once had, engrave it onto a jade pendant, and store it in the Spirit Repository Hall of the Human Sovereign Hall.”
The Spirit Repository Hall was a newly opened area, specifically used to store the cultures of civilizations that were on the brink of destruction or had already been destroyed.
“Alright.”
…
“Did you all really think energy is conserved?” In the Human Sovereign Hall, Jiang Li looked at everyone with astonishment.
The astonishment on everyone else’s faces was no less than Jiang Li’s.
Isn’t energy conservation the normal state of things?
Just as Jiang Li was about to say something, a Human Sovereign Hall guard tiptoed to Jiang Li’s side, whispered a few words, and handed a stack of papers to him.
Jiang Li sighed. “Luo Ying, Luo Zhu, and Ji Kongkong have returned from a world called Zhou Tian. The situation in the Zhou Tian World is terrible. Some planets are on the brink of destruction, some have already been destroyed, all done by the Executor of Karma.”
“This is the exploration report for the Zhou Tian World.”
Jiang Li copied the report several times and distributed it to everyone.
Everyone carefully read through the Zhou Tian World report without speaking, Jiang Li included.
Suddenly, as Jiang Li flipped to the twelfth report on the Zhou Tian World, his hand paused, and his body stiffened.
“What’s wrong?” Commander Liu noticed Jiang Li’s unusual expression.
“It’s nothing. I just feel a bit troubled and want to go out for a walk.” After saying this, Jiang Li stood up and left the Human Sovereign Hall.
Everyone exchanged glances. They had known Jiang Li for five hundred years and had never seen him like this before.
Bai Hongtu also stood up, wanting to see what was going on, but was pulled back by Yu Yin. “Let him have some quiet time alone.”
…
Jiang Li teleported to Blue Star and walked silently.
He walked through the ruins of Blue Star, one step deep, one step shallow, measuring the land with his footsteps, recalling the past with his gaze, as if a whole lifetime had passed.
Jiang Li tried to find the scenes of the past, but over two hundred years had passed since then. Time had flown, and combined with the baptism of artillery fire, the scenes from his memory were long gone.
“I once asked the Queen of the Earth where Blue Star was, but she said I needed to know which world Blue Star belonged to. It wasn’t until today that I learned the world I was in before was called the Zhou Tian World.”
Jiang Li came to the orphanage. The Old Dean had long since passed away. Before the war came, the orphanage had already changed to the next dean.
The next dean was Jiang Li’s childhood playmate.
“Gone, they’re all gone.” Jiang Li’s tone held an indescribable melancholy.
Jiang Li came under a large tree. When he was a child, he loved climbing the tree to read. Then the Old Dean would climb a ladder, holding a feather duster, and chase him down, saying it was too dangerous.
The big tree had long since withered, leaving only half its trunk.
Jiang Li accidentally caught sight of a broken stone tablet on the ground, with the character “Li” written on it.
“Returning Wind, Reversing Fire, Restore.”
Jiang Li used Dao techniques to restore the stone tablet. The scattered stones around it floated in the air, gathering towards the stone piece with the character “Li,” forming a complete tablet.
Jiang Li’s hand, which was performing the spell, trembled slightly. This was the tombstone the Old Dean had erected for him.
He seemed to see, two hundred and sixty years ago, the Old Dean crying, his companions crying.
Everyone was crying, except for him, who was already dead.
“Ah—”
Under the tombstone was Jiang Li’s corpse, but Jiang Li had no intention of going to look.
He straightened the tombstone, then left the orphanage directly, without looking back.
Jiang Li then came to the university. He studied here for ten years. He learned the goals of law from his Jurisprudence teacher, continued his studies under Professor Kong, and deepened his understanding of the law.
Jiang Li wanted to visit Professor Kong, but after Professor Kong retired, his office had long been taken over by others, and it was destroyed in the war, leaving nothing behind.
Jiang Li took out a pot of spirit wine and poured it on the ground.
“Professor Kong, I’ve returned. I still practice the knowledge you taught me to this day.”
“Professor Kong, farewell.”
Jiang Li came to his workplace. This place had been spared the baptism of artillery fire and was preserved most completely.
Here, he found Xiang Liang’s file. Without Jiang Li blocking his path, Xiang Liang rose swiftly through the ranks, reaching a high position, and then ended up in prison.
Everything Xiang Liang had struggled for throughout his life vanished with his imprisonment, like an illusory bubble, impossible to grasp.
He died of old age in prison, with no one caring.
As for the higher-ups who had framed him, Jiang Li didn’t want to look. He held no resentment; on the contrary, he pitied those people.
Those people didn’t know the vastness of the world, hadn’t even stepped beyond Blue Star. They guarded their little plots of land, scheming and plotting against each other.
What did they gain in the end?
Wealth and possessions are not brought at birth nor taken at death. Society did not progress because of their existence.
“Truly, one comes empty-handed and leaves empty-handed.”
“When I died, I still had friends who cried for me. What about you? Besides family, who would shed sincere tears for you?”
Jiang Li walked to many places. He cast spells to cleanse radiation. He searched for survivors, speaking with them in the language of his past life. He searched for those famous historical sites that left a profound mark in history, thinking of the passages he had memorized in middle and high school…
“I can’t go back.”
There were indeed survivors who spoke the language of his past life, but the topics Jiang Li tried to discuss, the other party knew nothing about. The Fengshan Sacrifice at Mount Tai, Journey to the West, internet slang… they couldn’t find common ground.
The scenery praised by those literati and poets, the land and rivers that emperors of great talent and vision struggled for their entire lives, could no longer be found.
Everything had become empty.
The Blue Star in Jiang Li’s memory could now only be found in the jade pendant engraved by Ji Kongkong.
“Du Ye, you died too easily.” Jiang Li murmured.
He had indeed been framed to death, but that was merely his personal grievance, unrelated to Blue Star itself.
His past was tragic, yes, but the beautiful things about Blue Star far outweighed the tragedy he endured.
Blue Star was his home. It shouldn’t have ended up like this.
“Speaking of which, how exactly did I die?”
“After the court’s verdict, where did I go?”
Jiang Li stood bewildered on the ruins. A cold, sharp wind blew past. He suddenly realized he was missing a piece of memory.